When racism was a huge problem in the U.S in the late 20th century there were two main African American leaders that stepped into play to help control the issues. Even though they were completely opposite both of them made huge changes in the segregation of the United States of America, the names Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Dubois will never be forgotten, As a consequence the rivalry between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois is one well known to scholars and historians of the African American community. This paper compares and contrasts the ideals of Washington and Du Bois and identifies the difference between the two dealing with discrimination. In the early twentieth century, there were several different approaches on the question of black equality. African-American figures such as W.E.B Du Bois and Booker T. Washington held opposing views and approached the problem in different ways. They both felt African Americans deserved equality, but Booker T Washington felt that the way to achieve this would be through education. He felt that the creation of Tuskegee Institute would allow African Americans to use education to enter the work force and gain economic equality. W.E.B Du Bois was a critic of Washington and felt that Washington’s approach to gaining equality was far too passive. Critics felt that Washington’s methods would take a long time and blacks had to work with the white man without demands and protests. Du Bois accused Booker T. Washington of appeasement and demanded for a much more radical approach to the problem. The first question this paper will answer is who was Booker T. Washington? The second question this paper will answer is what was Booker T. Washington’s view on blacks and equality? The third question this paper answers is who was W.E.B Dubois? The fourth question this paper answers is what were W.E.B Dubois views on civil rights and equality for African Americans. The fifth question this paper answers is what was the difference...

YOU MAY ALSO FIND THESE DOCUMENTS HELPFUL

...For many African Americans, the end of the Civil War seemed like the start of a new era, an era defined by Jefferson’s Lockean ideals: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, despite governmental and non-governmental efforts such as the Reconstruction Amendments, public education, and the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau, many African Americans still faced the reality of widespread discrimination and segregation. And although many African Americans made economic advancements, their collective voice in society was faint and often ignored. Amidst this bleak situation for African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, two figures emerged as prominent leaders. Booker T. Washington and William Edward Burghardt Du Bois took very different approaches to improving the circumstances of African Americans. Though both perspectives were reasonable, Du Bois provided a better blueprint to bring about political freedom and independence for African Americans, while Washington’s focus on economic equality presupposed that African Americans would continue to work obediently and faithfully in professions that did not require higher education.
While it was clear that African Americans were making progress in the quality of their economic lives, their lack of real political power ultimately resulted in a wide and seemingly impossible-to-close gap between the two races. Through education and more diverse and specialized jobs, African Americans become more...

...
W.E.B. DU BOIS
“And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”(American Rhetoric). These where the famous words spoken by the famous Martin Luther King Jr., the African American Civil Rights leader, in his “I have a dream speech” delivered on August 28, 1963. One hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation passed on January 1, 1863, which freed all the slaves, discrimination amongst the African Americans was still a huge deal.
Further more, just like Martin Luther King Jr., William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was a Civil Rights Activist. He was born on February 23, 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts to a relatively poor family. His mother was a maid and his dad passed away at an early age. Du Bois was a very intelligent intellectual. He attended Harvard and in 1895 he was the first African American to receive a Harvard Doctorate. However, on February 12, 1909 Du Bois founded the NAACP. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an African-American civil rights organization here in the United States. Its mission is "to ensure the political,...

... From 1877 to 1915, African Americans were faced with a lot of hardships because of Jim Crow Laws, lynchings, and other forms of discrimination. During this period of time, two people in particular offered strategies for dealing with the troubles African Americans were going through. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois offered very diverse plans of action. While Washington wanted African Americans to go to school and get educated in agriculture, Dubois wanted them to protest for their civil rights. Though Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois often had opposing strategies for achieving African American equality, each had developed strategies that were appropriate for the time period. However, due to factors present at the time, neither civil rights leader was able to develop a wholly appropriate method for equality.
Booker T. Washington was born a slave in the south so he knew about the struggles that African Americans had been going through because he went through them too. He used his experiences to help form his strategy for gaining equality. In his "Atlanta Compromise Address" he stated, “Cast down your bucket where you are…While doing this you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen." He was telling the whites that if they would put their trust in AAs, they would not be let...

...Washington vs. DuBois Approach for 1877-1915
On January 1, 1863, the United States’ Negro population was proclaimed “henceforth and forever free” according to President Abraham Lincoln’s establishment of the Emancipation Proclamation. However, years after its release, the Negro population was still mistreated. After the Civil War, white southerners were relentless in establishing themselves as the superior race. The newly implemented Black Codes restricted African Americans' of their new freedom and essentially began a new form of slavery. African Americans experienced violent discrimination and devastating poverty daily. In an attempt to diminish this oppression, two great and well respected leaders of the black community, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois, offered contrasting approaches. Both methods contributed to the movement; however, one was more appropriate for the time period. Overall, Washington’s philosophy of self help and acceptance of discrimination was the better fit.
Washington presented his approach to an audience on September 18, 1895, when he delivered his Atlanta Compromise Address. In his address, Washington advised blacks to accept discrimination for the time being and concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and an education and career in an industrial study, such as farming, enterprise, housekeeping, or thrift. He explained that this would earn the respect of whites and eventually...

...
The Great Debate
2/18/2014
Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. DuBois
Booker Taliaferro Washington was born a slave on a small farm in Virginia. After the emancipation he moved with his family to work in the salt and coal mines. After an education at Hampton Institute Booker received a teaching position at Hampton that sparked ideas for his future. In 1881 Booker found Tuskegee Institute. Though he offered nothing that was innovative in industrial education, he became the chief black exemplar and spokesman. He convinced the southern white employers and governs that Tuskegee offered an education that would keep blacks “down on the farm and in the trades”(Washington. 1963). He even convinced the self-made white northerners like Carnegie and Rockefeller to “help” him and to his people living within post-reconstruction south, he gave them industrial education.
Booker wanted his people educated and out of the web of sharecropping and debt. Washington urged blacks to accept segregation and the loss of voting rights in exchange for Southern support of educational and economic opportunities. He wanted his people to have small businesses and to own land. Booker cultivated local white approval and secured a small state appropriation. This is why I feel some of his people didn’t follow him. I mean come on now, a black man during this time with the power Booker had was dangerous! I mean to the white man’s plan. If and only if all of his people would...

...Dubois and His Critics: My Intervention
Race is one of the most controversial concepts in today’s society. At present, there is no clear definition or explanation of race. To this day, it is unclear as to whether or not it is possible to characterize and classify racial groups. The concept of race is always defined in terms of the physical and/or biological factors such as skin color. The initial classification by skin color continues to be a problem in classifying race. Humans need a shared knowledge regarding the empirical and socially appropriate identification of persons into groups in order to have a “just” social structure. W.E.B Dubois offers such an explanation that could help categorize race based on the spiritual or human constructed characteristics. “Race, then would be understood as a cluster concept which draws together under a single word references of biological, cultural, and geological factors thought characteristics of a population” (Outlaw, 20). The previous statement states that race cannot be defined purely with the biological/physical factors; the spiritual factor, which includes culture, history, must be taken into account. In fact, Dubois reasons that physical factors of race are intermingled with the spiritual factors because the definition of race can never be simply given.
The focus of this paper will be an argument in favor of Dubois’s following explanation of race, “what, then is race? It is a vast...

...Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois
Booker T. Washington was a dominant African-American leader in the United States in the late 1890s to early 1900s. He believed that people could make the transition from poverty to success with self-help. His views incorporated working to achieve benefits and rewards from the whites and accepting their place in society as blacks.
Washington and his students built the Tuskegee Institute for learning and to provide themselves with basic needs. The Tuskegee Institute opened in July of 1888 and emphasized a practical education. People there learned different trades while receiving an education. Washington believed that blacks would gain full credit in society by acting as responsible American citizens. In his piece titled “Blacks Should Stop Agitating for Political Equality,” Washington states that blacks should acknowledge the opportunities that are given to them rather than fights for rights that would be harder to obtain. His goal was to make African Americans useful and intelligent citizens. He said, “The wisest among my race understand the agitation of questions of social equality is extremist folly.” This means that his people had many rights to benefit from and shouldn’t try to fight for new ones.
W.E.B. DuBois, on the other hand, pushed for equal rights for blacks from the start. He fought discrimination and racism and was a founding member of the NAACP, (National Association for the...

...Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B. Dubois Debate
* the debate over the best course for racial advancement in America by 1905 was run by:
* Booker T. Washington
* Booker T. Washington did not think that social equality of the races was as important as economic equality. He said:
* "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing." -- Washington, Atlanta Exposition Address, 1895.
* W. E. B. Du Bois
* Du Bois later called Washington's Atlanta Exposition Address the "Atlanta Compromise," because it compromised social equality of the races in order to gain economic equality. Du Bois wrote to Washington and said of the Atlanta Address:
* "My Dear Mr. Washington: Let me heartily congratulate you upon your phenomenal success in Atlanta -- it was a word fitly spoken."-- Letter, Du Bois to Washington, Sept. 24, 1895
Education:
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON: * Leading promoter of "industrial education." In addition to basic skills like reading and writing, it was important to learn a trade that would lead to a real job. * "Many have had the thought that industrial training was meant to make the Negro work, much as he worked during the days of slavery. This is far from my...